‘They will not let you have the island,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I dare not face them and tell them it is yours.’
‘Do you admit it’s mine?’ I asked eagerly.
A slow smile dawned on Phroso’s face, and she held out her hand to me. Ah, Denny, my conscience, why were you at the bottom of the chasm? I seized her hand and kissed it.
‘Between friends,’ she said softly, ‘there is no thine nor mine.’
Ah, Denny, where were you? I kissed her hand again—and dropped it like a red-hot coal.
‘But I can’t say that to my islanders,’ said Phroso, smiling.
Charming as it was, I wished she had not said it to me. I wished that she would not speak as she spoke, or look as she looked, or be what she was. I forgot all about the trap-door. The island was piling sensations on me.
At last I got up and went to the table. I found there a scrap of paper, on which Denny had drawn a fancy sketch of Constantine (to whom, by the way, he attributed hoofs and a tail). I turned the blank side uppermost, and took my pencil out of my pocket. I was determined to put the thing on a business-like footing; so I began: ‘Whereas’—which has a cold, legal, business-like sound:
‘Whereas,’ I wrote in English, ‘this island of Neopalia is mine, I hereby fully, freely, and absolutely give it to the Lady Euphrosyne, niece of Stefan Georgios Stefanopoulos, lately Lord of the said island—Wheatley.’ And I made a copy underneath in Greek, and, walking across to Phroso, handed the paper to her, remarking in a rather disagreeable tone, ‘There you are; that’ll put it all straight, I hope.’ And I sat down again, feeling out of humour. I did not like giving up my island, even to Phroso. Moreover I had the strongest doubt whether my surrender would be of the least use in saving my skin.